Piles of Common Core Paper Work

Professional Goals

It’s that time of year when we have to sit down as a level and right a professional goal for the year.  Our goal is to learn more about Common Core Language Arts.  I work for a small Catholic School and we do not receive much information through the year.  So we (the teachers) have to do a lot of our own research on the Internet. 

I have purchased several things already: 

1.       I have the Common Core App on my ipad and iphone.  It is nice to quickly reference the information. 

2.     I purchased some grids on TeachersPayTeachers from Heidi at My (Not So) Elementary Life.  It is a great resource. 

I have purchase/found freebies/pinned all sorts of wonderful activities, however when I go to lesson plan I am overwhelmed with where to start. 

So I decided to organized all the standards into file folders and sort all the activities by strands so I can see what I have.  Now when I lesson plan I can quickly go through the strands and pick out something. 

I typed all the strands up on labels and color coded them in my file box.  If you would like a copy of them just leave me a comment and your email and I will send them to you for free.  

An added bonus …… the organized box will help me fill out my assessment grids.

 

Five For Friday -- August 30

The first week of school is over and I made it!  The kids were wonderful; Mother Nature on the other hand was cruel.  After one of the coolest summers in years, the first week back and it is 90+ degrees.  The kids were just melting. 

So that brings me to my Top Five Things for the first week Back To School….

1.       Thank you to the wonderful parent who took pity on us and donated a brand new air conditioner.  Thank you to our new principal for allowing the new air conditioner because our ceiling fans were not doing the job.  My heart truly goes out to the other teachers in the building, I felt so guilty walking by them.  They were dripping in sweat.  My kids were able to focus and learn some things.  All classrooms should have air conditioners.

2.     This was our art project for the week.  We read, Chrysanthemum, and made our rainbow names.  

Then later in the day, we read, What I Like About Me, and drew our self-portraits.  I put these up in the back of the room under my words, First Grade is Fabulous.  All the pictures look super cute.

3.     I just LOVE this red bench I found at Target.  I can easily move it around the room to sit on.  It is perfect.  The kids like to sit on it too.

4.     I found this free idea on Pinterest and it is a lot of fun.  The children are having a great time sharing fun facts about themselves.  Great Introduction Idea!

 

Kindergarten Squared

Thank Goodness for Starbucks......I think I lived on Iced Passion Lemonade Teas for the past two months.  The Bigger the Better!  They taste so good on a hot day!

5.      

Organize your Students

Labels  Labels  Labels

Right now I am getting ready for all my new first graders.  We had our open house and the students dropped off all their supplies.  I am realizing I need to organize some labels quickly for their notebooks and folders.  Here is the labels I put together.  All the labels are shipping size.  If you would like a copy of any of these just leave a comment with your email and I will send them to you.

 I hope your first day of school is cooler than mine, it was 97.  

Listen to A Story

As part of my Daily 5 Reading Block my students will be listening to stories.  I no longer have a tape/cd player for my students to listen to stories.  So they will have to use the computers and ipads.  I have a little computer center in my classroom.

Today I worked on looking for free sites with online stories for the children to watch during the stations.  I did find a couple that I liked.  I put them on my wikipage that the children use.  

I use big graphics so that the children can easily navigate the page.  Please CLICK HERE and stop by and see my Reading Station page and let me know what you think.  

If you know of more sites that I can add please let me know.  

Happy Reading :)